


a black crypt with no name

by ssalemghostss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Georgian Era, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted Mansion AU, Horror, It's All Fine, Murder, Reylo - Freeform, Secret love, Suicide, The Butler Did It, Tragedy, and ben just needs to think his dead wife was reincarnated, ballrooms, but now to survive you must gain new sight, evil and darkness have fallen this night, georgian era ben, hey honey you know they have dead people in the backyard, real estate agent rey, rey just needs to talk to herself sometimes okay, secret rooms, we're fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2020-12-28 15:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21139259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssalemghostss/pseuds/ssalemghostss
Summary: dark spirits from the grave, come forth. lift us from the black, and show us, show us the way back...lift us up to the light, and lead us through this stormy night.evil and darkness have fallen this night. but now to survive, you must gain new sight.only the light will lead the way. follow it and find the way homerelease us! release us all!A Reylo Haunted Mansion AU.





	1. part i

The moon was nearly directly overhead, a little over half-full; its delicate silvery light cast an eerie glow on the treetops as Rey Johnston walked home alone.

She passed like a phantom from the orange flicker of one streetlight to the next, subconsciously quickening her pace in the darkness between them. 

She hated this. Not just the act of walking back to her shabby, one-room basement suite alone in the middle of the night. She hated the way her every footfall echoed back to her off the cold sides of the houses which seemed to leer at her as she passed. She hated how the gnarled, leafless branches of the old elm trees looked like twisted fingers reaching out to grab her. She hated that there was a sharp chill in the air. She also simply hated the town she was walking in. 

She moved to the historic town of Gracey two years ago from London, England; bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the prospect of living and working across the pond. At first it had been wonderful. She loved the old manor houses, with their iron gates, sprawling lawns, and retouched exteriors. She appreciated the effortless way that architecture from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries could be blended with modern designs through something as simple as siding colour, window shape, or shingling. It had brought joy to her architect heart to find a community so passionate about maintaining their historical buildings, as opposed to the common desire for destruction seen most everywhere else.

But things had quickly fallen apart for her. Every house was too expensive to rent; there weren’t enough apartments to be had, so she’d had to settle for living below her landlord, Miss Leroy, a strange old spinster with three cats named after her favourite game show hosts; and she worked a boring, grey job at a real estate agency where no one took her seriously and she was lucky to sell two houses a month. 

She had slipped rather comfortably into this shroud of misery quite some time ago and had yet to find her way out of it, mainly due to the fact that she had long ago stopped trying. 

But even so, walking home alone at night on those ancient streets still unnerved her. The town of Gracey had a peculiar and malicious energy to it that she couldn’t quite comprehend, though she had her theories.

She had done her research before moving from London. What she found should have scared her away, she knew, but somehow it had attracted her instead. 

Gracey was a very old town, founded in the 1670s. Over the years following its incorporation, blood soaked the soil upon which the community continued to build. Devastating battles were fought there during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Amerian Civil War. Rey believed the concentrated bloodshed caused by these destructive events, along with the massacre of thousands of Indigenous peoples in the area, left a stained imprint on the land that could not be scrubbed out. 

Whether it was an everlasting bloody stain or a curse remained to be determined. Bad things continued to happen in Gracey. People died in mysterious ways; electricity and even animals behaved strangely sometimes. But it was the  _ why _ of it all, begging to be answered, that bothered Rey the most.

A sudden, damp chill encircled her ankles and she froze, looking down just in time to see a dense, low-hanging cloud of fog slip between her legs. She watched in muted horror for a moment as it crawled along the street, covering the pavement in a gossamer blanket that seemed to pulse and breathe like a living being. 

Rey looked behind her as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and gooseflesh covered her body — the familiar feeling of being watched. She could see no one on the street behind her, nor could she see an end to the fog. It was simply a sea of gently rolling clouds, trailing towards her like smoke.

When she faced forwards again, the three streetlights that remained between her and her residence flickered out, leaving nothing but impenetrable darkness before her. 

“No way,” she muttered quietly to herself as her heart raced faster. “This can’t be happening.” 

Although she felt frozen, and her mind suddenly felt like it was trekking through mud, her legs began to carry her forward into the darkness as though they had a mind of their own. 

_ I’ve just got to get home,  _ she thought to herself.  _ I’m almost there. I’ve just got to get home, and then I can crawl into bed and wake up in the morning to realize that this was just a dream. _

Her legs moved faster and faster even though she couldn’t quite feel them, and soon enough she was running as quickly as she could in kitten heels and a pencil skirt. Everything was dark but her eyes were adjusting as best as they could. She could feel the fog growing thicker and rising up her legs. She knew when she hit the driveway to her house, and she could see enough to follow the narrow sidewalk around to the basement entrance. 

With numb and shaking fingers, she pried her tan leather purse open and searched its depths for her house keys. As she was blindly grabbing for them, her phone began to vibrate and blurt out its sharp ringtone, which sounded ten times louder in the dead of night. Rey jumped and let out a small scream, quickly slapping a hand over her mouth.

She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a firm shake. “Get a grip, Johnston,” she muttered to herself. “ _ Please _ get a grip.”

_ But who would be calling me this late at night? _

She sourced out her phone and her keys, answering the former while she unlocked the door with the latter.

“Hello?” she said, breathless.

“Hello, madam. Who might I be speaking to?” 

The voice on the other end sounded like it belonged to a much older gentleman. It was gravelly with age yet still somewhat kind, retaining an air of professionalism Rey had never encountered after midnight on a Thursday.

“Um, well this is Rey Johnston. And who might you be?” she replied warily. She quickly flicked the lightswitch and locked her door once she was inside.

“My name is Luke Skywalker. I’m representing my nephew on this call,”

“Oh? Well, Mr. Skywalker, what can I do for your nephew this late at night?” 

“Oh! I suppose it is quite late, isn’t it? My apologies, Miss Johnston. I’m afraid I just don’t notice those sorts of things anymore.”

_ What things? The concept of night and day? _ Rey thought sceptically.

“It’s alright. I was working late, so I suppose I can take your call. What can I help you with?”

“I came across your flyer this evening as it was caught in our front gate. It says here you sell houses for a living, is that correct?”

Rey thought his manner of questioning to be odd, but said nothing of it.

“Yes, that’s correct. Are you looking to put a house on the market?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Are you familiar with the Solo mansion?”

Rey’s heart dropped into her stomach and then just as quickly bounced back up into her throat. The Solo mansion was one of the oldest properties in Gracey: a mid-nineteenth-century home of immense stature, complete with five acres of land upon which there also sat a private cemetery. No one knew who lived in that house, and many even doubted that anyone lived there at all anymore. It was well-known amongst the Gracey locals as being haunted. Teenagers would dare one another to trespass there, only to be scared out of their wits before they even got to the house. 

It was situated atop a great hill at the north end of Gracey, overlooking the town. It had often drawn Rey’s eye, from the moment she moved there, and she had never been able to discern why that was. It felt like a mixture of fear, curiosity, and awe; she just never knew which to act on. So she stayed at a distance. Though she could always feel its presence when she turned her back on it, as though it watched her and the town itself with a close, all-seeing eye.

“Miss Johnston? Are you still there?” 

Rey gulped. “Uh, y-yes, I’m still here. Sorry. I-I  _ do _ know of the Solo mansion. Although I kind of thought it was abandoned all this time. Do you mean to tell me you and your nephew have been living there?” 

“For many years, yes, we have,” Skywalker replied, somewhat grim. “I’m afraid my nephew and I find it difficult to leave the house for many reasons, none of which are relevant to this discussion.”

“Oh, y-yes, of course,” Rey blinked. Somehow the man’s chastisement got to her, and she found herself feeling sheepish for asking such a silly question.  _ Change the subject. Keep them interested. This could be big.  _

“So you want to sell it. Let’s talk about that.”

“My nephew would prefer to talk with you about it himself, in person,” Mr. Skywalker said, his tone now back to pleasant politeness. “Would you be available to come by and view the house, say, tomorrow evening, around six o’clock?” 

“Um…” 

_ No! Don’t you even think about it! This is wrong! This is all wrong!  _ Her every instinct was screaming at her to refuse, but the part of her that loved architecture, and the secret part of her that even loved to sell houses, were more powerful. She had always been curious about what that house looked like up close and on the inside. Plus, if she pulled this off and got a chance to sell the place, she could make enough money to leave Gracey behind and never return. That alone was enough for her to make up her mind.

“I would love to, Mr. Skywalker,” she replied with a grin. “Six o’clock it is. I’ll see you and your nephew then.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Skywalker answered. “Oh — Miss Johnston? One last thing,”

“Yes?”

“Please be sure to come alone.”

Outside, the fog had mysteriously lifted, and the three streetlights flashed back to life in unison with the drop of the call.


	2. part ii

“I’ve lost my mind. It’s officially happened. I’ve come to the end of my rope, and this is a last-ditch attempt at a cry for help that no one will ever hear, that’s all.” 

Rey rolled her eyes and squeezed the worn-out leather of her steering wheel. 

“And here I am, talking to myself about it.” she grumbled sorely.

She pushed her small blue Pontiac G6 up the steep winding slope of the hill towards the looming figure of the old decrepit house. As she crested the hill and it came more into view, she began to wonder how on earth she was going to manage to sell the place and still make a profit. It needed serious exterior work including new roofing, for one thing — the existing features looked as though they hadn’t been upgraded since the year eighteen-forty-something-or-other. The dead and dying tendrils of vines along the fence were overgrown and scraggly-looking. And it only got worse as she pulled up to the front gate.

The tall, pointed iron posts of the fence were rusted around the hinges, and the entire gateway was criss-crossed with a heavy chain secured by an ancient padlock. The house seemed to glare at her from the other side, even though its windows were dark and it seemed like there was no sign of life within it at all.

Confused and more than a little apprehensive, Rey remained in her car and honked the horn three times. She couldn’t for the life of her see a call box, or anything that even came close to saying “please, come on in.” She waited for a few minutes after honking and nothing happened. The gate did not open. She could see no one walking down the driveway to greet her. A strange chill seeped into her blood.

“Great,” she huffed, turning her car off and unbuckling her seatbelt. “This isn’t vaguely traumatising at all.”

Slowly, she stepped out of her car. The fallen leaves which littered the road crunched beneath her shoes. The air felt colder up on the hill, and she drew her blazer tight across her chest as she walked cautiously up to the gate. Indeed, the wind had a fiercer bite than before, and dark grey clouds were rolling in from the east. 

It wasn’t until she was standing before the iron gate, inspecting the hefty padlock in her hand, that she realized it was very possible this was all an elaborate prank someone was playing on her. One of her coworkers, perhaps, bored with their life but not yet bored of playing the same tired game, all at Rey’s expense. And if that was the case, why lure her here? Were they waiting in the trees to jump out and scare her? Were they filming a video for the company Christmas party and thought this would get a few laughs?

She dropped the padlock in disgust and heard it clang loudly against the iron fence. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes at herself.

“I’m an idiot,” she sighed. “That’s what happens when I get phone calls after midnight — I make dumb choices without thinking it through. Honestly, what kind of silly, made-up name is ‘Skywalker’ anyway? How did I let that one get past me?”

Rey’s hand had just gripped the door handle of her car when the loud, screeching protests of rusty hinges behind her made her jump. She looked back at the gate only to see it slowly swinging open, both the chains and the padlock nowhere to be seen. 

“What the hell…” she said under her breath. 

She called out but no one answered her. While it was certainly strange to see a gate open on its own like that, especially one so incredibly foreboding, Rey supposed they may have gate controls within the house. It is the twenty-first century, after all, she told herself. While the exterior of the house left more to be desired, perhaps the interior would have more to offer.

_ I can only hope,  _ she thought grimly. With hesitant determination, she got into her car and continued to drive up to the front door of the house. She parked, got out, and, as they had last night, her numbed legs seemed to carry her up the steps to the front door. 

She took in her surroundings with the eyes of a hawk, or the eyes of someone who thought they just might die there. The house, though old and in dire need of repair, still maintained its timeless charm. Rey walked past a lovely attached greenhouse and found herself peering through the grimy glass to try and see inside. She could make out the warped shape of a grand piano in there, and thought it a strange place to keep such an instrument.

The front doors were tall and made of ornately-carved oak, adorned with two large brass lion door-knockers. The cold lions looked down at her with unseeing, pupiless eyes; their teeth bared to hold the thick round knocker in a snarl, simply daring her to grab at it so that they may try and close their steely jaws around her probing fingers.

She took a deep breath and grabbed one of the knockers anyway. When nothing happened, she used it to knock twice upon the door. She could hear the booming sound echo throughout the house and once again she began to wonder if there really was anybody inside.

“H-hello?” she called out, leaning this way and that to try and peer into a window. I’m Rey Johnston, with Hammond Real Estate. We had an appointment? Hello…?”

She sighed and dropped her hand. Frustration began to leech its way into her system.

Just as she was deciding whether to pound on the door and demand entry or walk back to her car and leave, the heavy doors swung inwards just as the front gate had, granting her entrance to the dim interior of the Solo manor.

Instantly the acrid smell of ancient dust greeted her nostrils, tickling her throat and making her cough. The authentic wooden floorboards of the entryway creaked beneath her shoes as she walked inside, but it was the mirrored grand staircases and ornate tile floor of the main reception room which caught her entire attention. 

The red velvet carpet was still draped down the stairs, though coated in a heavy layer of undisturbed dust. The high, angled plasterwork ceilings disappeared into darkness above her. And ahead, between the two staircases, there was mounted a large, antique clock. Its pale, moon-shaped face gazed out at her with a grimy yet glinting menace; its hands frozen on 12:13. 

A creaking floorboard not caused by her own weight froze her to the bone, and her eyes snapped to the dark space below the clock, where she could only assume a hallway might be found. She thought she could hear slow, calculated footsteps coming closer to her, and her pulse spiked. 

“E-excuse me, hello?” she repeated.

Lightning blitzed across the sky outside, flashing the entire room with a blinding blue-white glow. As disorienting as it was, Rey could have sworn she saw the figure of a person walking towards her from out of that hallway, but she couldn’t be sure. The backs of her eyelids still glared with the vivid remains of the sudden light. 

As if in answer to her question, lightning streaked once more, in time with startling clap of thunder, loud enough to shake the house beneath Rey’s feet. And during this flash of light, she could see without any further doubt that there was somebody walking towards her, and he looked far more frightening than anything she could have dreamed up in her mind.

The face she had seen, now etched and marred into her stunned eyes, had looked like a skeleton. Sunken eyes, a bone-white skin tone, and fine, grey hair brushed tight to the skull — it was enough to make her want to scream. But then, as the mystery figure entered the front room and raised his left hand, all the candles and torches came to life, filling the house with a warm, yellow-orange hue through which she could better see his features.

“What...how…?” Rey whispered in awe at the lights.  _ Some sort of fancy motion-detector trick? _ She pondered idly. 

The man did not seem perturbed in the least, however; and he didn’t look like a skeleton at all, just an old man who perhaps didn’t get to see the sun as often as he would have liked. He had kind blue eyes, crinkled around the corners, with long grey hair combed back, and a well-kept, short salt and pepper beard. He was wearing strangely formal, vintage attire — a white linen undershirt, black trousers, and a black high-collared waistcoat, complete with pocket watch and white gloves, as well as a navy bow tie. Rey struggled to keep a puzzled expression off of her face.  _ Did I just travel back in time? _

“Miss Johnston?” the man asked, and Rey recognized his voice. “I’m Luke Skywalker, we spoke on the phone.” 

Rey stuck out her hand for him to shake. “Yes, of course. It’s nice to meet you in person.”

Skywalker looked at her hand like it was no more impressive than a damp rag. He did not shake it, or even lift a finger in contemplation. Rey quickly dropped it, embarrassed. 

“If you will follow me,” Skywalker said monotonously, “my nephew will be meeting you in the dining hall, where he wishes to discuss business over dinner.”

Rey’s eyebrows shot up, and her right foot hesitated to move another inch. 

“Oh! Dinner? I-I’m sorry, but I couldn’t possibly intrude—” In direct betrayal of her words, her stomach gave a small growl at the mention of a hot meal. It  _ had _ been several hours since she last ate, after all.

“Nonsense, Miss Johnston,” Skywalker carried on. “It is not an intrusion if you are invited.”

Rey clamped her mouth shut.  _ But what about if I missed the invitation?  _

She followed the man at a leisurely pace into the main dining hall, already lit by dozens of elegant, tall white candles in wall sconces and silver holders. Its walls were lined with bookshelves, stocked nearly to bursting with original copies and vintage one-of-a-kinds. The sturdy oak table was eighteen feet long at least, Rey thought, and it was bordered by high-backed gilded chairs with navy blue velvet cushioning. This time, she couldn’t withhold her gasp.

She had seen a lot of dining rooms in her lifetime, but never one as timeless and stunning as this. She couldn’t take it all in fast enough, and there were a thousand words she wanted to say about it, but her thoughts were overpowered by a strong desire to run her fingers over the soft, aged spines of all the books. 

“My nephew will be here shortly, if you would be so kind as to wait for him,” Skywalker said, startling Rey out of her head. “Dinner will be served not long thereafter. If you don’t mind, I should go check on it.”

“Oh, o-of course,” Rey stammered. “I’ll, um, be here.”

Luke turned his back to leave and as Rey watched him, she could feel the familiar sensation of words forcing their way up her throat and exploding from her mouth, seemingly without her consent.

“Mr. Skywalker, wait. I have a question, and I hope it doesn’t sound  _ too _ pitiful, but I need to know — why me? I mean, why did your nephew pick me to sell this house?”

Skywalker raised his grizzly, grey brows, and Rey thought she could discern a shimmer of bemusement at the outer corners of his pale eyes.

“Yes, Miss Johnston, that does sound quite pitiful,” he answered bluntly. Heat flooded Rey’s cheeks. “But my nephew—well, he thought you had very... _ trustworthy _ features.” 

With that, the old man gave her a small bow and walked away, leaving her alone.

“‘Trustworthy features?’” Rey repeated to herself, blurting out a chuckle. “Does he mean in comparison to the other realtors in the area? If so, I’d have to agree...”

She began to walk around the large dining room, heading straight for the first row of bookshelves. She didn’t recognize many of the books, and a lot of their titles were in Latin or French, with a few lesser-known English novels and academic texts mixed in as well. 

As she continued to explore, she came across a small painting in an antique silver frame. It appeared to be very old; certainly not from the twentieth-century, let alone the twenty-first. Curious, she picked it up and brought it closer to her face to better inspect the two subjects of the painting.

They were two men. One of them was tall, with a roguish jawline, wreckless eyes, and a small, crooked grin, clearly uncharacteristic of whatever time period he was in, which seemed to be Georgian. He looked like the man’s man, with a slightly shauvenistic glint to his eye. The man next to him was shorter, frowning, and with an extremely familiar face, only clean-shaven.

It was Skywalker; the very same, it had to be. He was even wearing those white gloves, and had the golden pocket watch chain peeking out by his waist. His eyes were clear, and they looked out at Rey with distaste. But the painting looked authentically ancient! Her mind was reeling with fascination and confusion.

“But...how can that be?” she muttered to herself. 

The floor creaked somewhere behind her left shoulder and she jumped. Her fingers fumbled with the heavy frame and she nearly dropped it, but she managed to shakily restore it to its former place in one piece.

“Oh! I’m sorry! I just thought I’d look around, and I...I…” 

Any words she was going to say after that died in her throat; her mouth went bone-dry in an instant and sealed itself shut. Her mind went blank, and she could focus on nothing apart from the vague and distant ping of recollection she felt in the far recesses of her heart, which she did not understand at all. 

There was a man standing there, not very far away, watching her in wonderment. He was tall and strapping, with wide shoulders and long legs. He wore a black velvet tailcoat with gilded buttons and a high collar over a black vest and crisp white undershirt, and at his throat there was an eye-catching crimson cravat. His black trousers were comfortably form-fitting; his shoes impeccably shiny. But it wasn’t his aged costume that held Rey’s stare. 

His face, so darkly entrancing, startled something unfamiliar within her. The way his perfectly coiffed, raven hair trickled across his forehead and down the back of his neck in elegant yet lazy curls of night made her feel as though she had seen that lovely hairline before. Even his nose, long and with a small but defiant crook to it, as well as the fullness of the flushed lips beneath it, gave her such an impression. 

But the way he was looking at her, through eyes of golden brown, made her feel weak and dizzy. He was looking at her like he could hardly believe she was standing there in his dining hall; like he had been reunited with her somehow. The corner of his mouth pulled up in a lopsided smile, and Rey was reminded of the other man in the photo. They looked alike — perhaps they were distant relatives?

“It’s alright,” the man spoke, filling the void of silence which had swelled between them. “My apologies for keeping you waiting.”

He bowed his head to her and, feeling awkward, she fumbled a curtsey in return. 

“My name is Benjamin Solo but, please, call me Ben,” he said as he stood up. “And you’re Rey.”

Rey blinked, taken aback by the conversation suddenly being thrown to her.

“Um, yes, I am,” she said, offering him her hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ben.”

Unlike Luke, Ben took her hand in his, though he didn’t shake it. He grasped her fingertips with unexpected tenderness, and placed a kiss on her knuckles. Rey’s heart pounded an unrelenting beat in her eardrums.

Never in her life had another person rendered her so utterly speechless without saying or doing anything unbelievable to warrant it. Simply his voice—a rumbling baritone that made her legs feel like jelly—was enough to ruin her. Such a reaction unnerved her and sent her mind into a tailspin but there was something there — some familiar quality about his person or perhaps about the house itself, which kept her from losing complete control. 

“Please, take a seat. Dinner is about to be served.” 

He waved a large hand at the table and she followed his instruction, walking stiffly to a chair.

An extreme sense of awkwardness befell her as she sat, uncomfortably straight-backed, in the chair across from him. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly caused it. She stared with wandering eyes at random features of the room, trying to look innocent—and avoid Ben’s curious stare—as she mulled it over.

_ Is it the fact that I’ve never once been invited to a very personal one-on-one dinner at a client’s house before? Maybe; mixed with the other fact that I can’t remember why I accepted. Maybe it’s the thunder booming overhead. Or is it the morose expressions on the faces of Mr. Skywalker and that footman as they set this food down in front of me? No, that’s not quite it.  _

“Thank you, Uncle; Artoo. Help yourself, Miss Johnston,” Ben said, pushing a plate of carved roast duck towards her. “Don’t be shy.”

She smiled meekly and picked up a couple chunks of meat off the serving plate, but Rey wasn’t very hungry. And when she finally allowed herself to look at him again, her stomach flipped over, leaving her to feel jarred, and strangely hollow. 

_ Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me...like he knows me… _

She managed to force a few forkfuls of food down her throat, to be polite. It was very good, and far more lavish than any microwave soup she could whip up at home, but Rey felt odd. Rain was hammering at the windows and the wind wailed along the walls of the house. Every flash of lightning seemed to spike her anxiety, urging it on as though to confirm her suspicions.  _ Something is wrong. _

She cleared her throat, set her silverware down on her plate, and fixed her host with her best realtor smile.

“So, Mr. Solo, can we talk business?”

He finished chewing his bite and wiped his lips with a scarlet napkin. 

“Please call me Ben. Sorry — what business shall we attend to first?”

His gaze was steady and calculating. Her heart raced but she reminded herself to stay calm. 

“Well, I’m pleased to list the property for you, of course,” she explained briskly. “What price are you hoping to get for it?”

He blinked at her and his mouth opened and closed. 

“Oh, I uh, I hadn’t really thought about that…”

“Uh-huh,” Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck. Her cheeks hurt from maintaining the smile, but she persisted. 

“You could get three, maybe three point five million, I think. Even more if you pay to fix a couple things up first, although a lot of people  _ love _ a vintage fixer-upper like this nowadays...I’ll have to look into that some more for you, okay? And this is all assuming, of course, that the cemetery plot is included in the overall lot size?”

“Uhhhmm, well I—”

“I only ask because I understand it’s a private family cemetery, so I’m not sure what your plans are for it exactly,”

“Right, but—”

“We can figure this all out another time, of course—”

A third, distinct voice spoke up from the windows behind Rey. She jumped in her chair and that smile quickly evaporated from her face. She felt impossibly chilled as she leaned around the back of her chair to see Skywalker standing at the window with his back to them, looking out at the raging storm beyond.

“I’m afraid the storm has flooded the river,” he announced grimly. “There will be no leaving this house tonight.”

Those words, spoken in such a dark tone by such a strange man, were all it took to crack the very thin ice Rey felt she stood on and send her plunging into the icy black waters of panic. She stood abruptly from the table, nearly pushing her chair over backwards. She could feel her lungs begging to hyperventilate, but she could not let them. Not in front of strangers, not here,  _ not now… _

“No,” she said bluntly, rushing to the window expecting to see a different scene. “No, it can’t have...I need to go home. I can’t be stuck here.”

“Miss Johnston…?” Ben spoke from the table, standing slowly. “There are several bedrooms in this house; we’d be happy to accommodate you until the storm clears—”

“You don’t understand; I need to go home  _ right now _ !” She yelled, spinning around to face him, wild in her panic. 

The room fell silent for a painful beat, and Rey’s chest felt utterly constricted. Ben, Skywalker, and the sad-faced footman were all looking at her with concern, and it made her feel even worse. 

“Excuse me; I need to use the restroom.”

She wiped hot tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve as she rapidly left the room. 

She was already down the hall and up the stairs before she realized she had not the first clue where to find a bathroom. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nowww we're gonna start getting somewhere...(somewhere dark, spooky, and probably lustful, that's where)
> 
> If you're liking it so far, I'd love if you could share it! :)
> 
> [Tumblr.](https://reylo-solo.tumblr.com/)   
[Twitter.](https://twitter.com/reyloghosts)


	3. part iii

Wandering the halls of a foreign, ancient manor whilst combatting an anxiety attack was one way to put Rey’s navigational skills to the test. This house was all darkened hallways and misleading doors; plus the myriad of portraits lining the halls did nothing to soothe her trembling nerves. She could swear their narrowed, hooded eyes followed her throughout the house.

Eventually she gave up even looking for a bathroom. She didn’t really need to use one. She decided to just focus on escaping the maze she’d entered. She was somewhere on the second floor, she thought. Yes, she definitely remembered climbing stairs at some point.

On a whim, she turned right, and entered through an open door into a darkened room. Her eyes narrowed and all she could see were misshapen black lumps, unmoving but threatening in their anonymity. Her fingers probed the dusty walls for a lightswitch but found nothing other than cobwebs, so thick they felt like matted human hair as she ripped through them. 

She squealed in disgust and flung her hand about, wringing it with her other to pull off the clinging strands. Her skin now crawling all over, she gave up looking for a switch and pulled the blue Bic lighter from her blazer pocket. Every now and again, when a meeting or a deal went sour, she needed a cigarette. Just one, from the pack she kept in the glovebox of her car. She’d had a feeling she would be needing it when she left to come to the Solo mansion. 

It flamed bright enough to illuminate the pale blue, cracked wallpaper; now partly shorn of its cobweb cowls, thanks to Rey. As she walked further into the room, she came to realize it was an office of some sort. There was a grand old maple desk as its centrepiece; atop which sat an elaborate candelabra, its ghostly stalks of wax still mostly intact. Hastily, she lit them all and watched as their flames grew to cast flickering shadows about the room.

Her anxieties now replaced by morbid curiosity, she walked around the desk to better see the papers scattered atop it. They, like everything else in the house, were covered in a thick film of dust and aged debris. She blew and brushed it away to the best of her ability, until she could read it. 

There was no writing on it, only a faded letterhead bearing the inscription: _ From the desk of Benjamin C. Solo. _ Disappointed at the lack of ink upon the page, she pulled a desk drawer open. It protested in a horrendous screech that echoed in her ears. Her heart was hammering steadily in her chest when she reached inside and removed a thin journal with yellowed pages and a dark green cover.

She heard no footsteps coming towards her from the hallway, so she opened it. The first few pages were blank much like the letters on the desk. Rey thought it was bizarre, to keep a journal but not fill it with words. She flipped through about halfway before she noticed something — a few simple words, scrawled lazily in blotted ink upon a random page. 

The cursive was lovely and neat, calligraphic in style, but it trailed across the page at a lilting angle. Some of the words were muddled by what Rey could only assume were teardrops, which made the message they bore even harder to consume.

_ I am in such terrible pain. I fear I will never feel happiness again; not until she is back in my arms, in this world, or the next. _

Suddenly Rey felt terribly intrusive, reading such private things. She came to her senses so abruptly that she threw the journal back into its drawer and slammed it shut. She knew what she had done was terribly inappropriate, but for some reason she felt herself become more curious than ever about Ben Solo. 

Surely it had been his journal. But who was ‘she’ and what had happened to her? Is he happy now, or happier, at least? She’d thought he held an air of tragedy about him like a cracked and broken halo. But what was the whole story?

_ Ugh, _ she groaned to herself. _ I’ve been spending too much time listening to those town ladies gossip at the hair salon. And the grocery store. And the pharmacy. And the sidewalks. I’ve just been spending too much time in this town, period. _

Her eyes roved over the other items atop the abandoned desk: a dried-up inkwell, an antique calligraphy set, a tarnished copper compass, and a small marble bust of an older woman Rey did not recognize. Perhaps selfishly, she pocketed the compass for herself. She didn’t know which way was up in this house, and if she was going to escape in a storm she would need a better sense of direction. It didn’t look like it had been touched in about a hundred years or more, anyway. Surely they wouldn’t miss it.

She walked around the desk, cupping the small head of the marble bust under her palm as she went, intending to continue her impromptu exploration for just a few minutes more. But as she walked forwards, she felt the bust tilt with her, and in a moment of panic which stipulated she was about to drop and break it, she fumbled with it, only to realize that it had stopped dead at a forty-five degree angle. 

As she was leaning in to take a closer look at what was keeping the bust from falling, she heard a rumbling nearby and jumped, looking to her right just in time to see a panel of the bookcase slide open and reveal a secret, dark hallway. 

“What the hell…?” Rey uttered into the open air, stunned by what she was seeing.

She walked towards this new door with extreme caution, holding the candles aloft and wrinkling her nose when the musty smell of disuse greeted her nostrils with bitter sharpness.

It appeared to be a hidden stone hallway leading to a set of descending stairs. It was frigidly cold in there, tucked away as it was behind the walls of the office like some kind of evil lair. 

Once she was inside, the bookcase slid closed behind her, leaving her trapped between wood and stone. She didn’t even try to pound on the back of the bookcase; she knew it would be of no use.

“Shit!” she cursed. “How stupid can you be to just walk through a secret door like nothing’s going to happen…”

With a defeated sigh, she descended the stairs. At their bottom, she faced another long hallway, this one adorned with several doors on either side, and one straight ahead of her. No perceived exit, only more entrances. 

She groaned deeply and dug the compass out of her pocket, flicking it open in the hopes that it could give her some sense of where to go. But the needle of the compass spun round and round its face, never stopping and only moving faster. Rey had never seen such a thing happen before. 

_ Are there magnets in the walls or something? _ She thought blankly. _ I’ll have to make a note of that if I’m going to sell this place… _

Just then something caught her eye that made her forget all about the malfunctioning compass. There was a blue light, glowing from behind the closed door at the end of the hall. She thought she could hear the whisperings of a far-off voice, telling her things she couldn’t quite understand. As she walked towards it, the light grew brighter.

Maybe she should have been scared. Maybe she should have tried a different door, one that wasn’t glowing blue. Maybe. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t. There was something strangely comforting and even enticing about the light and the whispering, garbled voices that were getting louder in the hallway. It felt warm and inviting; it drew her in with such ease that maybe it should have shocked her — but it didn’t. 

The door opened soundlessly and she stepped inside. It was a very chaotic room — a crooked four-poster in the far corner told Rey it had been someone’s bedchambers, but it could just as easily be mistaken for an unorganized storage room. Loose papers, stacks of books, suitcases, and even an upturned desk littered the floor, severely decreasing Rey’s range of movement. 

But she could hardly pay much mind to any of that. The blue light had revealed itself to her. It was a glowing orb, floating freely in the middle of the room; its brightness overpowered her candles. Rey realized she could make out words in the muffled voices now, and it was the gentle, echoing voice of a female that spoke to her. The voice spoke from the light, though the sound traveled back from all corners of the room, and Rey watched, entranced, as the orb slowly drifted to the bed.

_ For so long I have been lost now. Only you can find me … Rey … He must know the truth… _

The orb descended until it disappeared through the grubby mattress, and Rey watched its light radiate outwards from beneath the four-poster for just a second before fading.

Left in the dim orange hue of candlelight she felt icy cold and somehow desperate to see the orb again. She stepped over the largest obstacles scattered about the floor and set the candelabra on the bedside table. As she knelt down onto the filthy rug, she could hardly believe what she was doing. But she could not stand and quit now, no more than she could groan about it.

Slowly, she lifted the bedskirt to peer beneath. There were all manner of junk and debris under there, but what caught her eye was a book, lying face-down on the floor, with an odd luminescence to its frayed pages. She reached in to grab it and screamed loudly at the skittering of mouse feet and frightened squeaks which greeted her.

With both her heart and her dinner nearly in her throat, she stabbed into the darkness one more time, successfully grabbing the worn cover of the book and extracting it from the nests which had accumulated around it. 

_ There is not enough hand sanitizer in the world to comfort me now, _ she thought.

Holding the book close to the flickering light of the candles, she opened it. It was nothing more than a collection of old children’s stories. It was a museum-quality artifact, having been printed in 1760 with most of its pages still well intact. Rey flipped through it for a while, skimming the pages, before something fell from within it and landed at her feet.

She bent to pick it up and found it to be a separate piece of paper from that found in the book. This new paper felt softer and thinner — far more delicate than the quality required for a children’s book. 

“Parchment?” she whispered to herself. 

She opened it with extreme delicacy, careful not to tear the edges and simply praying it wouldn’t disintegrate at her touch. She was quite surprised to see it was a private letter, written in ink, its words drawn in a lovely, flowing script. As Rey read it aloud, a part of her felt wrong for doing so. The contents were private indeed, and very troubling.

_ My dearest,  _

_ I have given much thought to our conversation in the garden where we then talked at great length about our “hopes” and our future together. _

_ My dear sweet Benjamin, you see only the good in the world around you. And I fear I cannot do the same, for I am burdened with despair at the thought of marrying someone whom I do not love. I cannot carry on this lie as I suffer, nor can I keep on knowing how I will have hurt you so. Tonight, at last, I will put an end to it all: our doomed marriage, and my troubled life. _

_ Yours, _

_ Raewyn _

Rey’s mind reeled with a hundred questions. The main inquiry being what Benjamin was this letter addressed to? Was it the very same one she now knew? But that couldn’t be — the letter was clearly old as dirt, and the Ben she knew couldn’t be older than thirty-two. 

Her thumb ran across the signature at the bottom of the page. _ Raewyn. _ Why did that name strike a nerve within Rey? Who was she?

There was a heavy, muffled sound behind her, like something falling. She gasped and dropped the book, but kept the letter clutched carefully to her chest. She spun around, and it was a minute before she noticed what had made the noise. A heavy fur coat was lying in a crumpled heap by the shuttered window. Rey knew it hadn’t been like that before.

Perhaps foolishly, she walked over for a closer look, allowing the candelabra to illuminate what the darkness wanted to hide from her. That was when she noticed what the fur coat had been covering up; what the house wanted her to see.

There was a large painted portrait in a lovely baroque frame leaning up against the wall, partially obscured behind piles of junk. At first, Rey didn’t realize it was a painting. She thought it was a mirror.

The subject of the painting was her exact image, only in old period clothing with fine pearls strung about her neck, and her brown hair secured in a perfect updo, decorated with jewels. Those eyes — Rey’s eyes — looked straight at her with a kind quality, and her lips, lively and pink, were pulled into a pleasant close-mouthed smile. 

Suddenly it felt as though Rey’s legs were going to give out. She shuddered in fear and, letter in hand, ran away from the room, shutting the door firmly behind her. 

Her heart pounded in her head and the hallway was spinning before her. She stumbled and wobbled her way forwards, because she refused to stay anywhere near that painting. That terrible, frightening painting that left her with too many questions she could not fathom the answers to.

Partially blinded by her panic, she picked a random door and walked through it, only to walk straight into something solid and warm. With cold sweat dampening the back of her neck, and her lungs heaving for air they could not get enough of, she looked up into the surprised face of Ben Solo.

“Rey! There you are,” he exclaimed, putting his hands gingerly on her upper arms to steady her. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Are you feeling alright?”

Without thinking she grabbed his arm, gripping harder than she even intended to. A shockwave wracked her body, cold as the dead of winter, with electricity crackling in its path. Without really acknowledging the thought beyond an automatic acceptance of its truth, she knew what the sensation meant.

Death.

“What happened to you?” She blurted, her voice hoarse. 

Ben’s face fell and he stiffened, trying to free his arm from her iron grip but failing to succeed. His eyes looked darker, more ominous, somehow.

“I beg your pardon?” He asked sharply.

She came to her senses, then. Blunt confrontation was not the way to handle this. She didn’t know what had come over her, and felt a slight stab of regret lance through her gut. 

It took her a few tries to speak again for her mouth was dry as ash and tasted just as bitter. 

“I-I need to s-sit down…” 

“Of course. Right this way.” 

As he guided her to a nearby love seat, she remembered she still held the letter like a frail little bird inside her loose fist. Acting on instinct she stuffed it in her blazer pocket, to avoid him seeing it. If she was going to get to the bottom of whatever mystery plagued this mansion, she was going to do it on her own terms. She knew that much at least.

“Where did you go?” he asked softly after some time, fixing her with those curiously warm eyes of his. “I know it’s easy to get lost in a place like this.” 

Obviously he was willing to move past her odd greeting, at whatever risk it was to him, so long as she was in agreement. For the moment, she supposed, she was.

“I was trying to find a restroom,” she explained meekly. “I-I got a little lost.”

“I assumed so,” He smirked at her. “I hope you didn’t panic for too long?”

“Hm? Oh, no, not at all,” Rey lied. “I just, um, yeah I got a little turned around is all. Hey, since you’re here now, would you show me around? I’d love to hear more about this place. The features, the quirks, the _ history _…”

Ben’s face lit up and he nodded, clearly quite enthused at the chance to tour her.

“Of course; it would be my pleasure,”

He stood and offered her his arm, which she took willfully, her legs still seeming to be comprised mostly of jelly. 

“Let’s begin, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoyed the update! Parts IV and V coming soon!
> 
> Tumblr.  
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	4. part iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **please re-read chapter 3, as a certain plot point has been changed bc I am a clown**

Benjamin Solo was very, very charming.

It took Rey all of two minutes to come to that conclusion once he began to show her around the house. The way he talked about the place somehow made her forget about the cobwebs, shadows, and mysteries it held. It was almost as if the entire house was transformed by his words; she could practically see the golden accents gleaming on the walls, and hear a happy fire crackling in the library’s hearth.  _ There’s a strange magic here _ , she thought idly, just as the hairs on her arms began to rise.

“This is the master bedroom,” he explained, leading her into a room so large it could hardly be called a bedroom in Rey’s opinion. 

Sure, it had all the staples of a bedroom: a king-sized four-poster against the back wall, decorated with sheets of black and burgundy velvet; a large and dusty oak armoire; a gilded standing mirror by the curtained panel window. Oh, yes, all the trappings of a bedroom. But what of the stone fireplace with lion’s head carvings, and the two high-backed plush chairs sat before it on a bearskin rug? Or the shelves of books and museum-quality antiquities that lined the walls? It felt more like a bedroom-study-museum hybrid than any one particular space.

“So, this is where you sleep?” Rey inquired, purposefully intrusive in her phrasing.

“Oh—ah, no,” he responded sheepishly. “I don’t sleep in here anymore.”

_ Five bucks says I can guess why. The answer starts with ‘ex’ and ends in ‘fiancé.’ _

For the sake of remaining on his good side, Rey feigned innocence.

“Why ever not?” She asked. “It’s a lovely room. Very...spacious.”

“Yes, it is,” he admitted morosely. “I’m afraid it’s haunted to me.”

Rey’s head shot up and her spine went rigid. 

“Haunted? As in, ghosts?” She asked.  _ Like the orb of light I saw? Has he seen it too? _

Something unreadable passed over his face. Rey couldn’t tell if it was sadness, wryness, or something else, far more bone-chilling. 

“No, no. Just memories.”

She felt it then: the sudden jab of instinct in her gut telling her this was it. This was her opportunity to ask about the painting and the letter. A small opening for big questions, to be sure, but she had to know.

“Memories of your wife, correct?” Purposely bold in her phrasing, she hoped the misuse of title would prompt him to tell the story of what had happened after the letter was written.

He narrowed his eyes at her—not with animosity but curiosity—and took a step towards her.

“Fiancé, actually...we never married. How do you know—?”

“Forgive me—I simply had a feeling,” she smiled politely and lied beautifully, comforting him. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

“No offence made, Miss,” Ben answered. That charm reappeared on his face in a flash, with an attractive, lopsided smile. 

“I’m afraid I owe  _ you _ an apology,” he went on, his voice somehow solemn and silky at the same time. “You asked to know more about this place, including the history. I’ve been steering the discussion away from that, for my own selfish reasons. I...I do not want you to think less of me, because of my past.”

This surprised Rey.  _ Why should he care what I think? He doesn’t know me, nor I him,  _ she thought curiously in the back of her mind. She didn’t dare question it aloud, though, because this was it. She was about to finally get some answers.

“Rest assured, I will not think less of you.” she promised.  _ I’m not really sure  _ what  _ to think of you yet, so it’s the truth. _

“I thank you. The simple fact of the matter is this place feels bittersweet for me.” 

He paused to run his fingers along a polished shelf in the bookcase. Rey watched his hand, admiring the impressive length of his fingers as they spilled over the edge of the shelf; its breadth at once too wide and masculine for such a delicate action, yet his caress seemed light as air. 

“I have had many happy memories here, of course,” he carried on, his hand falling away once it reached the end of the shelf. “I grew up here. My childhood evolved into adolescence in these very halls. I learned so much on these grounds.”

Another pause, brief but loaded. A surge of heartache passed through Rey like a chilled breeze, gone as quickly as it had come but leaving her more hollow than before.

“But it is also in this house that I lost the love of my life,” he confessed forlornly. “She died, the night before our wedding.” 

“Oh, my god…” The words escaped Rey on a breath. “What happened to her?”

“She took her life,” he answered, “by ingesting poisoned wine.” 

“Poison…? Oh, my, that’s awful” 

She wanted to tell him she’d seen the letter, but she stopped herself before she could bring it up. She couldn’t fathom how to breach such a topic, and something inside of her told her now was not the time. Even though she could sense something was terribly wrong, she needed to be careful in how she approached it, or she would never get to the bottom of it.

“Why? How?” she prompted him. The unasked questions spoke louder inside of her head.  _ Why did she not want to marry you? Did she truly not love you?  _

He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and tossed her a contemplative look before shaking his head decisively. 

“I’m sorry—I should not be frightening you with such forlorn matters of the past,” he said. “It’s terribly dark conversation for a lady such as yourself.” 

“Oh, I don’t m—”

“Shall we see another room?” 

The finality in his tone forced her to pause. For a brief second she contemplated pushing it further, but that was only before she noticed the pleading look in his eyes. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she had a strong enough constitution for the rest of the story; rather, he simply wasn’t sure he would be able to tell it. 

“Yes, let’s do that.” she relented. Suddenly she felt immensely guilty, fishing him for information like that. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her. She was only a real estate agent after all; she didn’t need to know the details. 

He carried on, showing her the lavish master bath, more than a few guest rooms, the parlor and the kitchens. Everything was decorated in antiquity. As the tour proceeded, the more Rey felt like time itself was slipping away from her. Years bled into centuries; the world became nothing more than a book whose pages were flipping backward.

Eventually, they descended the grand, sweeping staircase to the ballroom. It’s edges were dark and shadowy now; it’s immaculate tile flooring was showing signs of age and disuse. But the energy of the room was spellbinding. 

Rey could envision the lavish parties that once took place here; could practically hear the overlapping chatter of dozens of lively conversations happening all at once. The cheerful tinkling of live music, all keys and strings, echoed in the distant reaches of her mind like a far-off memory, long forgotten.

“Wow,” She gasped involuntarily, catching Ben’s eye. “This is an incredible space.”

He smiled meekly. “Oh...yes, it is. Um, you’ll notice the grand skylight in the domed ceiling presents a picturesque mosaic, so that during evening dances and late night parties, guests can lose themselves in the night sky—”

“Do you host many parties here?” She asked idly. Her footsteps echoed pleasantly off the high walls as she walked around.

“...I used to,” he answered, hesitating. “I’m afraid no one has danced in this ballroom in a very long time.”

She nodded, understanding. “More of those haunted memories, correct?”

“Yes.”

_ I think I’m beginning to understand what a haunted memory feels like,  _ she thought, recalling the distant sounds of joviality once again. Had she ever really heard that far-off music, or was it from something else?  _ A false memory? No...it feels different from that. More like a past life—a lost story. _

She stopped her distracted explorations to smile warmly at him. It seemed to catch him off-guard, somehow. Those dark eyebrows shot up, and his plush mouth parted just slightly, as though he felt he should say something, but he didn’t know what.  _ Is it just me,  _ she wondered,  _ or is he very easy to read? _

“I’ll bet you’re a lovely dancer,” she mused. 

“Oh,” he breathed a laugh, abashed. “I’m only alright. It took many years of training and a stern determination to stop stepping on my partner’s toes.”

Rey giggled at the thought.  _ He is rather large for dainty footwork, isn’t he? _

“Well I should wager you’re still a shade or two better than I am,” she admitted freely. 

“Surely you’re not a terrible dancer? You have such a nice frame for it,” He threw her a wry, crooked smile that she very nearly fell for.

“Afraid I am. I just—I get lost in my head about it, and my coordination goes completely out the window. So, normally I settle for a lot of arm movement, hopping around, and hip wriggling. It’s...well, it’s certainly not the classy show I’m sure you’re accustomed to here, to say the least.”

He laughed, and ran a hand through his dark locks. The hair coiled around his fingers like thick plumes of smoke before ruffling back into place, perfectly tousled. She watched him, suddenly mesmerized. 

“Perhaps it’s only because you didn’t have a teacher who was dedicated enough to the craft,” he offered.

“Yes, that’s definitely part of it.” 

“I could show you some ballroom steps, if you’d like,” he offered eagerly.

A slow smile spread across her face. She wasn’t sure if it was the room, or him, or some other shifting energy in the air, but she felt oddly giddy all of a sudden. 

“I think I  _ would _ like that.” she agreed.

“Well, then—” He stepped towards her, bowed graciously, and offered her his hand. “May I?”

“Oh!” Rey grinned and placed her palm in his. “You may.”

His grip was warm and gentle, and when she felt his other hand press itself delicately to her lower back, she stiffened with pleasant surprise.

“Alright, now place your hand on my shoulder...that’s it,” he instructed, gently coaxing her body to follow. “There, now just angle your elbow a touch; straight back, chin up—perfect.”

She looked up at him and was instantly taken by the attentiveness in his honeyed eyes. Even though there was no music, and she had no idea what she was doing, all of his focus was on her and not an ounce of it was judgemental. Never before in her life had Rey felt so important to any one person. The realization made her blush deeply, and she looked down at their feet in an effort to hide it.

“Chin up,” he reminded her softly. 

With great effort, she did as he bade her, and he smiled encouragingly. 

“I’ll go easy on you, don’t worry. Now, step out with your left foot. Good, and bring in your right foot—yes, now turn your body just a few degrees this way—remember to keep your elbows up, though…”

They began to slowly and stiffly dance around the room. Rey found it difficult not to check her feet every few seconds, but Ben didn’t seem to mind. He took simple, small steps to ensure that she’d be able to keep up. After several minutes and more than a few missteps, Rey had caught on comfortably.

“Now you’ve got it,” he complimented. “Let’s move a little faster now; a little sharper on the heel…”

Before long, they were spinning and swirling across the ballroom floor. Rey felt light as air with his hands on her; almost as if she were free-floating, and his gentle hold was the only thing anchoring her to the ground. 

As they danced, that ghostly vision came back to her, and she could practically see the room in all its former glory: stunning crimson walls embossed with gold, which shimmered in her peripherals as she danced; the heady, lingering taste of spiced wine on her tongue; and the hypnotizing way the stars twinkled from the skylight above. She could not contain the happy laughter which seeped from her mouth like the first rain of spring: rejuvenating and intoxicating all at once.

Ben spun her freely and tugged her back to himself, laughing along with her as his own memories of a happier time swirled through his mind’s eye. Their bodies collided with a delicate jolt, and they found mere inches of space left between the tips of their noses. Their dancing came to a standstill in an instant.

There was a moment shared between them, however short-lived it was, of intense contemplation. Rey did not hesitate dropping her gaze to his full lips, which trembled almost imperceptibly at her attention. 

But in the end, denial won over desire.

Ben cleared his throat and stood back, bowing to her once more as he dropped her hand. 

“I suppose it is rather late,” he commented when he stood upright again. “I’m sure you’d like to get some rest before the dawn arrives.”

“Oh. Yes, y-you’re probably right.” Rey admitted, though she felt like all the wind had been stolen from her sails. 

_ Damn it,  _ she thought.  _ Why didn’t I kiss him?  _ Then, after a puzzled moment of self-reflection, she answered her own question:  _ Because kissing him would have been weird, that’s why. He’s a client, whom I just met today! Get a grip, Johnson. _

“Shall I walk you back to your room?” he offered politely.

“Yes, please. I don’t think I’d be able to find it on my own without getting lost again.” She smiled sheepishly.

He accompanied her back up the stairs and down the long hallway to her bedroom door. He didn’t say much as they walked, but neither did she. Their respective inner monologues were far too loud for chit-chat.

“Here you are,” he announced stiffly. “I hope you sleep well, Miss Johnson.”

“Ah, thank you,” she muttered. “Sorry, for interrupting your night.” 

“Please. I...I had a lovely time showing you around.” 

“...I had a lovely time, too.”

After a brief pause for kindred smiles, Rey took a deep breath and opened the door to her guest bedroom. She turned to face him one last time, and caught the tail-end of a sad frown weighing down his handsome mouth. As soon as he felt her eyes land on him, though, he turned it around as if it had never been there in the first place.

_ Guess I’m not the only one who thinks they’re good at hiding the truth,  _ she thought secretively.

“Goodnight, Miss Johnson,” he said kindly. 

“Goodnight.”

***

As Ben turned the corner towards his own quarters, a voice spoke to him from the shadows.

“Lovely, isn’t she?” it said. 

Ben paused. It gave him little to no pleasure to be around his uncle these days, but ever since the old man saw Rey’s picture in the news flyer, he’d become especially exasperating.

“Uncle,” he greeted curtly.

He attempted to continue on towards his bedroom, but Luke would have none of it. 

“What are your opinions of her?” he asked, plaguing Ben once more with his obsessive behaviour. “Is it not her? Your Raewyn, come back to you after all these years?”

Ben stopped again, and heaved a sigh. He had no one else to discuss the matter with, after all.

“Yes, she is a dead ringer,” he agreed. “But though she may have my Rae’s face, the two are not one in the same.” 

Luke stepped out from the dark shadows by the wall, eyebrows furrowed in perplexion. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can admit there is some biological connection there—I can feel it, even though it’s very distant. But all of that aside, she’s...something else entirely.” 

“But could you love her just the same?” 

“Luke—” Ben grumbled.

_ “Could you?” _ Luke snapped. “Do not forget what’s at stake, nephew.”

Ben hated this. He’d always thought it was going to be easier than this, when Raewyn finally came back to him. To be fair, he’d had his hopes greatly inflated. But his uncle had never been particularly truthful with him, even when they were still alive. 

“Yes, I believe I could love her,” he admitted begrudgingly. “However, I’m not certain I’m meant to.” 

He could see Luke bristling with anger. It was always a dangerous game, testing these waters. One false step and everything would boil over in scalding hot waves.

“What are you saying?” Luke asked, chewing out each word.

“Uncle, if I go through with this mad plan of yours, she’ll lose her life! I am  _ poison _ to her!”

“Yes, just as the poison your former fiance ingested infected us with this bloody curse all those years ago!” Luke hissed. “Her life will be fulfilled when true love’s kiss reunites you with your lover and the curse gets lifted, don’t you see? That is the  _ point _ !”

“But I can’t do that to her—”

“Do you not want to move on from this place?” Luke snarled. “Do you not wish to escape this miserable state of half-existence so you can cease straddling the world of the living and the world of the dead?” 

Ben sighed, defeated. “Yes, I do.”

“Then you  _ can _ and you  _ will  _ go through with the plan, and you will do it quickly. Whether the girl agrees to it or not. The house is already working its magic on her. All you have to do is kiss her and it’s as good as done.”

With one final stern look of brimstone and hellfire, Luke left his nephew with a warning.

“We have waited centuries for this day to come. Do not ruin it over some false sense of compassion for the living.”

Ben retired to his study for the night, though he couldn’t help but wonder what his uncle would say or do if he knew how close he had come to kissing Rey in the ballroom. And, why hadn’t he kissed her? She had wanted him to, it had been clear, yet he declined the opportunity. The answer, he supposed, was both easily deducible and hauntingly complicated. 

He realized, if she were really Raewyn reincarnate, he may have done it, for the Raewyn he’d known had been fond of being taken by surprise. But he could sense, without much difficulty, that Rey was not. They were not the same, and could not be won over with the same tactics. 

He realized he did not want to win Rey over the same way he had Raewyn. She was not a prize. She would not  _ be _ won. He was not guaranteed to have her, like he had been guaranteed the daughter of a prosperous landowner. She was rogue and unpredictable instead; an entirely new type of woman. If the spirit of his former fiance took hold of her body, all that Rey is would be lost forever.

Ben realized, with a wave of morose guilt for all he’d lost and hoped for, that he could not stand to let that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the terribly long wait, you guys. Life happened and I entered a weird head space for a while. But I'm back working on fic, slowly but surely, and I've got a part V and a part VI to deliver yet. ;) Thank you for being patient with me.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/reyloghosts)   
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	5. part v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNING**  
This chapter features a brief dream depiction of Ben’s suicide in the first third.

Rey danced with Ben in her dreams that night.

His hand upon her lower back had felt so real, warm and secure. Though she was no skilled dancer, her legs carried her effortlessly as she floated along in his form. It was in this moment, when she felt shocked by her own sudden talent, that Rey realized she was dreaming.

She could end it there, if she wanted to. But  _ oh, _ the way he was looking at her—as though he could hardly believe she was there with him—it made her stay. It felt too nice to leave.

He spun her outward, and though their bodies were apart for only the briefest of moments, it felt like a terrible eternity. When she felt the reassuring tug on her arm and he pulled her back, she found that his cheek slipped so easily into the waiting palm of her hand. His lips fit against hers perfectly. His touch lit a fire within her that pebbled the skin over her entire body.

“It really  _ is  _ you,” he whispered once they parted for air.

“...Ben?” Rey queried. She was confused by his statement. Something cold and menacing doused the flames in her belly.

_ What could he possibly mean by that? _

The ballroom went dark. So dark that Rey could not discern the walls from the floor or the ceiling. She felt weirdly suspended, and that chill within her quickly grew.

She watched in horror as Ben’s face fell in an instant, his head lolling forward at a grotesque angle before he was viciously pulled upward from Rey’s arms. His body shot into the black void above her where he hung by a rope, spinning slowly around…

“Oh god...oh, god, no—” Rey moaned. 

_ I need to wake up. I need to wake up right now. _

She did everything she could think of. She screamed at herself, pinched herself, threw herself at the darkness, and the only thing that changed was her panic. It grew exponentially, so that when she dared to look up one more time, just to check and see if he was still there, she screamed, because he was. 

_ “Rey…” _

A voice. Soft, and feminine. Rey did not recognize it, yet it knew her name.

_ “Find the thing that must be read, lest your heart be filled with dread,”  _ the voice spoke again.

“Please!” Rey screeched. The terror had begun to make her shake. “Please, whatever you’re trying to show me, I-I don’t want to see it! Please, stop!”

_ “Find the black crypt with no name. Retrieve the key to unlock the hidden truth,”  _ the voice explained.  _ “Find me, Rey...release me…” _

Rey uttered a blood-curdling scream that only got louder as the suspended feeling suddenly left her, and her body began tumbling down, down, down, into the unknown. 

Over and over she saw the same image flash before her dizzying vision: a long, dust-coated, onyx-stained coffin. Near its narrow top, there appeared a narrow rectangular shadow where the wood stain had not touched. It looked like there had been a nameplate of some kind there once. But whatever it was had been stricken from existence long ago. 

She squeezed her eyes shut to rid herself of the disturbing picture and braced for the impact of a fall that would most certainly kill her, but it never came. Instead, she landed quite gently on her feet on the marble steps before the large, dark mausoleum doors.

She could feel the nighttime chill on her bare skin, as if it were actually there. Like ghostly breaths, trickling down the back of her neck and swirling over her arms and legs. The rain was still coming down, too; the only thing keeping her dry was the small overhang on the mausoleum roof. But she could still feel its icy moisture, sprayed in a fine mist on the breeze.

The doors were open a crack. She remembered the voice had instructed her to go inside. ‘ _ Find the black crypt with no name.’  _ Would it be easy to do? Rey doubted it very much, but she couldn’t seem to wake herself from this awful dream either, so she didn’t feel she had much choice.

Hesitantly, she pushed the doors open. They slowly swung inwards on creaky, ancient hinges. The interior was not at all what she had expected.

Neat rows of burial chambers were built into the walls on either side, but as she stepped in, the yawning blackness of the place was suddenly lit by the flames of two torches in their sconces at the far end of the mausoleum. It was by their light that Rey was able to see a flight of stone steps leading down into more ominous darkness.

Just how far did this place go? How many bodies could it hold? It was an old, historic building, after all, and a lot had happened here over the years. Rey tried to put the thought out of her mind. She had a seemingly impossible task to carry out and it would do her no good to have a panic attack two steps into her quest.

She inspected the interior walls closely. No black coffin, and every internment was accompanied by a name.  _ Damn,  _ she cursed to herself. This of course meant she was going to have to grab a torch, descend the steps and discover whatever awaited her below ground.

She had never seen a tomb like this one. It was like the tombs she read about in fiction, or saw in a scary movie. The steps were narrow and winding; cut from stone and so ancient that they were worn down in the most commonly tread areas. Small, square holes were cut into the walls all the way down, holding urns, dried bouquets of flowers, and other offerings.

It smelled damp—like mildew and earth, and something else, mild but lingering, that she couldn’t put a name to. Was it the smell of death? Did such ancient bones and ash emit a smell like that?

Finally, she reached the bottom. Her heart sank like a stone. She had anticipated her task to be a difficult one, but now, looking at what lay ahead of her, it seemed impossible.

The crypt was cavernous, with high, domed ceilings and the stalest, most awfully pungent air Rey had ever breathed. It smelled of mould and rot; the sweet aftertaste of decay lingered long past its welcome in the back of her throat. She coughed and tried to cover her mouth and nose with her arm, but to no avail. 

It was deathly quiet, in the most unsettling of ways. The only sound was the echoing drip of water leaking somewhere, and the occasional skitter and squeak of rats as they retreated from her approach. 

“There’s no way…” she muttered to herself before speaking out louder. 

“If you can bring me here against my will, you can do me the courtesy of showing me how to find what I’m supposed to be looking for!” 

She paused for a moment, half-expecting the whispery voice from her dream to come back to her, but it never did. Hopelessness fell upon her, heavy and dark.

“What is the point?” She asked herself, defeated. “This is all insanity. None of this makes sense. I can’t even tell if it’s real or if I’m hallucinating…”

She didn’t know much about drugs, but this was what she imagined a bad trip to feel like.

Suddenly, a breeze floated past her and ruffled her hair and clothing, making her gasp with shock. The breeze felt oddly warm, in such a cold, damp place. Rey pondered where it could possibly be coming from this far underground, and thought it very strange. Stranger still when the breeze grew stronger—so strong that it felt like hands were pushing on her back and pulling on her arms, guiding her forwards. 

She followed the phantom guide as far as it would take her; past rows of old, seeping coffins, dust-coated urns, and small tributaries. Until finally, Rey found herself at the top of a small set of steps that led down to what appeared to be little more than an oval-shaped dip in the ground, where a stained black coffin rested.

_ This must be it,  _ Rey thought to herself, too afraid to speak.  _ This is what I’m looking for. _

Slowly, she descended the six steps down to the solitary coffin. 

It took her several deep breaths to summon enough courage to pry open the dusty lid. After a bit of grunting and pushing, it broke free, fraying about a thousand cobwebs in the process. A burst of acrid dust and who-knows-what-else hit her square in the chest and made her sputter and choke, practically dry-heaving with revulsion. Though she felt terribly lightheaded and panicked, she pressed on, and shoved the lid off the coffin.

It splintered as it hit a sharp rock near the ground. But it didn’t matter much now. The thing had been opened, and Rey stared at its contents in muted horror.

She had expected to find a skeleton relic, of which there certainly was one, dusty and misshapen as it was. Its jaw was open in a permanent, haunting scream. Spiders had occupied nearly every hollow vestibule of the remains available to them; cobwebs covered the bones like a thin blanket.

What she hadn’t expected, however, was recognizing the clothes the skeleton wore. She had seen traditional butler attire in person (and unironically) only once in her life, and very recently. And she knew this particular suit, for the man wearing it had invited her to this very mansion, landing her in this mess.

_ It can’t be him, obviously,  _ Rey told herself.  _ This must have been his predecessor. Right…? _

_ _ But it wasn’t just the clothes that reminded her of Luke Skywalker. There was something in the wispy strands of dark grey hair that remained, splayed out around the dry white dome of the skull like an eerie halo. The way they were parted, and the length of them…

_ But it can’t be… _

The same strange, warm breeze from before swept over her again. It was so uncharacteristic in the damp coolness of the crypt that it frightened Rey for a moment, until she heard the voice again: the same one that had spoken to her in her dream. She froze, still as a statue, entranced by the words that seemed to speak from within her mind.

_ “The truth lies hidden within a trunk in the attic,”  _ it said.  _ “Take the key.  _ Run _ .” _

As the voice vanished, so too did the warm air. The sudden temperature change shocked Rey’s system enough to shake her out of her stupor. 

Her eyes fell once more upon the unfortunately familiar skeleton, and she noticed there was something shining amidst the dust, clasped between bony hands. Upon closer inspection, she could tell it was in fact a small, gold key—the perfect size to fit into a trunk lock.

Rey took a deep breath and braced herself before reaching into the coffin. 

The skeleton was ancient and stiff, and gave new meaning to the term ‘death grip.’ The bones of the hands and arms shattered and cracked as she had no choice but to break them in order to remove the key. 

Once she’d finally managed to wriggle it free, she let out the long breath she couldn’t remember holding. She barely had time to empty her lungs of that air before she started to scream.

The skeleton had suddenly sat up, its jaw hanging limply open, and began to reach for her with its mangled hands.

Rey stumbled, falling backwards with a hard and painful  _ thump _ onto her rear, and the key slid out of her grasp and rattled loudly across the grimy stones. 

“No!” Rey screeched, kicking away from the coffin—of which the skeleton was beginning to crawl out of, head-first.

Scraping her hands and knees raw on the rough, earthen floor of the crypt, Rey’s eyes furiously scanned for any sign of the key. As she searched there was a sudden noise, like the ominous creaking of hundreds of old, wooden hinges. Terrified and shaking, she dared to look up.

Every coffin she could see was opening. Ghostly white fingers crept like spider legs around the lids which had kept them constrained for so many years—scratching, prying, clawing for freedom.

Behind her, the butler had fully escaped his coffin, and was dragging itself towards her.

She hardly noticed that frightened tears were streaming down her face. All she could focus on was finding that key, and it paid off. Through the haze of immense panic and terror, she caught the shine of gold, hidden in a small crack in the rock floor just ahead of her. 

She lunged, grabbed it, and stood on her feet, taking time to deliver a swift kick to the skull of the skeleton following her, sending its head careening into the growing crowd of ancient bones that were now free from their underground beds. 

Her feet had never carried her so fast before in her life. She climbed the steps two, three at a time, practically leaping towards the entrance into the underground crypt. She slammed into the wide, double-doors of the mausoleum and gave them a hefty shove.

They did not open.

“What? No,  _ no— _ !”

Rey wailed and hauled on the doors some more, violently shaking them in an effort to unstick them, but it felt like there was something leaning against the doors from the outside, trapping her in there with all the dead. 

Speaking of, she could hear the enemy in pursuit. They were shuffling up the stairs now, and making a haunting noise she would never get out of her head. It sounded like the wind as it rushed through thick tree branches—wailing and moaning in uncoordinated harmony—made more frightening still by the scratchy, high-pitched screech of a shrivelled voice box.

She screamed for anyone to help her. She knew the chances of her cries being heard were slim to none, but her senses had gone into overdrive. Adrenaline coursed through her body like the swiftest poison, making her shake and hyperventilate. 

The skeletons were closing in on her now. The first wave of them had nearly climbed the steps to the aboveground section. She could hear their fingers scraping against the walls. 

Desperate, she gave the doors one final shove with all her body weight behind it. Miraculously, they opened. 

She only had a split instant to dwell in her shock. There was no more time to waste. 

She closed and barricaded the doors behind her before streaking off across the grounds back to the house, her heart still pounding furiously in her chest. The world was still dark, and the storm still raged all around her, drenching her in rainwater and quickening her pace with thunderous cracks of lightning all around her. 

She tripped on something and went flying forwards with a choked scream. Her guts lurched within her as she fell, but just like before, the impact never came.

Instead, Rey woke with a start to find herself back in her bed, inside the house, with a small golden key and some damp earth clasped tightly in her fist. 

She practically jumped backward, slamming her head and shoulders against the headboard of the bed frame. 

_ How is this possible?! _ She thought desperately as she inspected herself. She was no longer drenched by rain; nor did she feel that unmistakable chill from being below-ground. But how could it have been a dream, when she now had the key? Not to mention that her clothes bore the distinct, filthy impression of a late-night excursion, and her knees and hands were scraped raw and bleeding.

_ “The truth lies hidden within a trunk in the attic…”  _ The voice came back to her as though caught on a stray breeze. Right. She had something she needed to do. And though she could not explain why she felt such a compulsion to complete the tasks laid out before her, she didn’t feel she needed to. No one would believe her, anyway.

Phantom hands that she could not see or really make sense of seemed to guide her to the attic. Her feet made no sound upon the floorboards or the stairs up into the ancient, unattended room.

Indeed, it had been a very long time since anyone had been up here. There was nearly three inches of dust on everything in sight.

After several frustrating minutes of searching in the near-darkness and trying to suppress her coughs, Rey finally spotted it. In the far corner, all the way at the back, there was an old, heavy trunk with a chunky, ancient lock hooked through its latch. Rey raced towards it and fell to her knees, eagerly jamming the key in the lock and twisting it until she heard the characteristic  _ ca-thunk _ and felt the weighty metal fall open into her palm.

A hundred thoughts raced through her mind. What was she going to find in there? How would she know when she’d found the right thing if she wasn’t even certain what she was meant to be looking for? Would there be another body hidden inside, which would awaken and try to attack her, like those in the crypt?

But when she opened it, she found nothing. The trunk was completely empty.

Her heart sank. Her mind reeled. What sort of game was this? Had any of it been real, or was she still dreaming? 

“This isn’t right…” she muttered to herself. 

Carefully, she leaned into the trunk and inspected its silk-lined interior. She ran her hands over it, just to see if anything seemed off. She wasn’t expecting to come across anything unusual, so of course she did. 

In the upper right-hand corner, there was something hidden beneath the silk lining. Rey’s heart began to pound again. 

It didn’t feel significant. It was flat, maybe eight by four inches or smaller, but it was certainly not factory-made. 

She grabbed at the silk lining near the corner and pulled until she could hear the fabric tear, then she pulled some more.

Finally, enough had come loose that she could push her hand inside and feel around for the object. What she removed was a folded and well-preserved piece of parchment, similar to the paper on which Raewyn’s suicide note had been written.

Rey unfolded it and began to read, stunned at the words her eyes beheld.

_ My dearest, _

_ I have given much thought to our conversation in the garden where we then talked at great length about our “hopes.” _

_ My dear sweet Benjamin, you see only the good in the world around you. You give me strength to give you the answer you asked for. Yes, my dear, I will marry you. I will love you for all eternity. And tonight, at last, we will be together. I do! _

_ Forever yours, _

_ Raewyn _

“What…?” Rey whispered to herself in bafflement. 

The letter bore striking resemblances to the suicide note she had found earlier, but the mood of this was completely opposite. This Raewyn wasn’t agonizing over anything—she seemed sure and excited for her future.  _ But how could someone go from being this happy to willingly drinking poison…? Unless _ —

Unless, Rey realized with alarm, the notes were not written by the same person at all. And if the voice had told her this note was the “hidden truth”, then that meant the suicide note had been faked.

“Oh, my god…” Rey breathed, trembling. 

_ I need to find Ben. _

As quickly as she could, she clambered down from the attic and turned to run down the hall, when she suddenly found herself face-to-face with a grim Luke Skywalker, who had fixed her with a blackened stare.

Rey’s heart leapt into her throat and restricted the scream that wished to escape her lungs. She tried to hide the note behind her back, but it was no use. He’d already spotted it and would know exactly what she’d been doing up there, anyway.

“Miss Johnston,” Luke said icily, “you must be lost.”

Rey evened out her stance and squared her shoulders, unsure of what was to come her way.

“I could say that, yeah,” she replied, “but I’d be lying. And what for? You know damn well what I was up there for.”

Luke inclined his chin, begrudgingly surprised by her boldness.

“I do. And I see you were successful in your search.”

Rey did not respond. She watched him almost unblinkingly; poised on the precipice of immense danger.

“Give me that letter, Miss Johnston,” Luke commanded, stretching out his hand to take it from her. 

“Why?”

“It does not belong to you, and was clearly hidden away for reasons you are not entitled to, nor will ever understand. Now give it to me, nosy thief!”

That was the moment where it all clicked into place for Rey. Obviously she had known someone else wrote the suicide letter, but now she knew who: Luke. But why? What had Raewyn done that made her deserve such a terrible fate? And why had he invited Rey to the mansion, if she wasn’t supposed to find the real letter?

“This is the letter your nephew was never meant to read, isn’t it?” She prodded, watching him unravel before her. “The one you gave him was the one  _ you _ wrote. But if I recall, that one said something very different from this.”

She held the true letter aloft, and waved it at him, taunting him.

“I can give it to him, you know. I can expose all your lies.”

At this, Luke laughed. It was a bone-chillingly cold laugh, with no real emotion in it at all. It made the hairs on the back of Rey’s neck stand on end. 

“But you won’t,” he said, in an eerie calm voice. “You don’t even realize the full extent of  _ our _ lies.”

Lightning flashed through the windows, illuminating the hall with pearly light for the briefest of moments, yet long enough for Rey’s nightmare to be realized.

She watched as the light transformed the shadows on Luke’s face. His eyes were overtaken by two sunken black holes; his nose nothing more than a small, cavernous slit. And his mouth—jaw unhinged, hanging open to a maw of gossamer cobwebs.

_ It  _ was  _ him,  _ Rey realized in alarm.  _ The skeleton with the key…it was Luke. _

As the light faded into darkness again, his features returned to normal, though there was a strange gleam of madness evident in his eyes.

“I suppose I should have informed you upon your arrival, but this property is, in fact, terribly haunted by lost spirits—”

Rey stumbled backward as he stepped toward her. It felt like the very foundations of the earth were falling away beneath her.

“—myself and my nephew included.”

He descended upon her with an angry shriek, hands reaching out for her throat. Rey threw up her arms and screamed, desperate, only hoping someone would hear her and come to her aid.

But then again, she was the only living person for miles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry for such a long break between updates. This year has, uh...successfully kicked my ass in 8 months or less.
> 
> If you liked it, let me know! One more chapter to go.


	6. part vi

Rey awoke some time later, her eyes fluttering open to the high, dark ceiling of the mansion’s ballroom. 

She felt very peculiar, as if she was just coming back into her body; she stretched her limbs outward and it felt to her like they took just a second too long to respond. 

She began to lift her shoulders from the couch upon which she laid, but found herself barred from sitting up at all. Her wrists and ankles had been tied by rope, separated and tied down to each leg of the piece of furniture which now served as her anchor.

Panic set in almost immediately. Her heart racing, she tugged helplessly on her bindings, but they didn’t budge even a millimetre. The last thing she remembered was Luke Skywalker’s grinning, malicious face looming at her from out of the darkness. 

Luke Skywalker, the dead man.

“Ben…?” She called out, her voice trembling with fear. “Ben!”

Was he even there? Had his uncle done something to him, too? But what could a ghost do to another that would hurt it? With too many incomprehensible questions left unanswered, Rey’s head swam with all manner of terrible things. She began to scream.

“Please, somebody help me!”

“No one can hear you. No one with any power to  _ help _ , anyway.”

Rey’s blood ran cold. She saw him then, walking towards her as though he had materialized out of the darkness itself; his face split by a skeletal, maniacal grin. Luke. The old-fashioned, wisened butler in prim, proper dress clothes. How long had he been hiding there? What did he have planned for her?

“Why…?” she asked, struggling with the rope. “What did you do to me? What do you  _ want _ ?” 

Luke sighed, as though he was disappointed in the fact that he now had to give her an answer.

“You are our key out of this cursed place,” he replied simply, walking slowly and confidently around her restrained form. “See, long ago, I made a grave mistake. The consequences of which I severely underestimated. 

“My nephew was always starry-eyed, and too ambitious for his own good,” Luke grumbled. The resentment in his tone gave his words a sharp edge. “Some called it pride. Others called it skill. I called it arrogance.

“So, when he fell in love with a young English girl, the manner in which he courted her was just that: arrogant. Stubborn, too. She rebuked him at first, but even that did not deter him. He hardly ever stopped talking about the peasant, either.”

His wording gave Rey pause. “Peasant?” she asked. The woman in the painting, the one she could only assume to be Raewyn, did not look like a peasant in the slightest in her satin dress and pearls. 

“She was a small, freckled thing,” he went on, “and she came here from England with barely a nickel to her name. Right away that told me she was only looking for a privileged husband to fund her new life in the New World. She lived at the boarding house, which was on the south end of the town at one time. She said she worked in the marketplace, though what she sold I can only imagine. Her body, most like.

“She was poor. Ill-mannered.  _ Disobedient.  _ She would never have obeyed him! And once she realized she had my nephew wrapped around her finger, she held on and took advantage of all she could.”

The expression on his face was dark. He had  _ hated _ this woman, bitterly.

“He was going to marry her. She was not worthy of the Solo-Skywalker name. She was not worthy of  _ this _ ; this life, these luxuries! I know she planned on getting me out of the house as soon as the deal was done. What could I do? I wasn’t about to let my nephew and his foolishness tarnish everything we—his mother, father, and I—had worked so hard to build! They would roll over in their  _ graves _ if they knew!

“So I intervened. I caught Raewyn’s reply to his proposal and swapped it out with a suicide note. And then, to make it official, I fed her poisoned wine. She felt nothing as she passed; only a heavy desire to sleep. That was the largest mercy I could have gifted her.”

_ Other than letting her live, you mean?  _ Rey thought, though she was too afraid to speak the words aloud.

“What I didn’t realize— _ couldn’t have  _ realized—was that my actions that night would bring forth a curse so dark and unholy that there would appear to be no escape from it—until now.” 

She felt his hand on her forehead and squirmed. The more she rocked her head side-to-side to try to rid herself of his touch, the harder he gripped her skull until she had no choice but to keep it steady.

His fingers began to comb through her hair. She felt her stomach churn. Her skin writhed in disgust.

“The culmination of my nephew’s heartbreak and my mortal sin thrust every living being in this house into purgatory. We are naught but ghosts, and yet we cannot leave these grounds. We are doomed to remain, forever unfulfilled, forever heartbroken. I thought it would always be that way, until I saw your flyer, caught in our front gate. The second I saw your face, everything changed…”

“Please,” Rey begged, “just tell me what you want from me. I’m not  _ her _ . I’m not Raewyn! We look alike; that’s  _ all _ .”

“Oh, but my dear, it’s so much more than that,” Luke was smiling again. 

He finally released his hold on her and began to pace once more; faster this time, as though he was growing more agitated.

“You are her doppelgänger. It was Ben’s implacable heartbreak over Raewyn’s death that brought about the curse. If I can use you as a vessel for Raewyn’s lost soul, you will become her. Enough that I can bring you to my nephew and have this all be reversed.” 

“You’re insane,” Rey spat. “You realize nothing you just said makes any sense at all?” 

Luke looked nonplussed by this. “Tell me, Miss Johnston,” he said, “when you woke up this morning, did you believe in ghost stories?”

Rey felt her heart sink. “N-no,” she mumbled.

“No. And yet, here you are, smack in the middle of one. Surrounded by dead people. Considering that, are you really so surprised to have your beliefs proven wrong once again?”

He wasn’t looking for an answer; the question had been entirely rhetorical. He cackled—a deep, vengeful bubble of laughter that swelled until it echoed throughout the house.

“You can’t do this,” Rey snarled. “You  _ won’t _ .”

“Hm, I suppose you can think whatever you want to at this point. It won’t change the outcome.” 

She watched him reach into his coat pocket and pull out something small, coiled up in his palm. With both hands, he unfurled it, revealing a delicate necklace of silver chain, with deep red rubies trailing down like droplets in a V-pattern. It caught Rey’s eye immediately and made her gasp. Something inside of her shuddered and her fingers twitched; some unfamiliar, foreign urge to reach out and take it registered vaguely in the recesses of her mind. 

“W-what is that?” she asked.

“Ah, do you feel it?” Luke inquired with interest. “It was  _ hers _ , you see. Benjamin gave it to her. A rather pricey thing for a woman he was only courting, but of course at that point he’d already decided he was going to try and marry the wretched girl…”

He looked at the priceless jewelry with disgust and then shrugged, as though willing away a pesky thought. 

“I’m going to use it to summon her from beyond the veil.” 

He approached Rey very suddenly and fastened the necklace about her throat. The silver chain felt icy cold against her skin, but the rubies—the rubies had a warmth to them that seemed to come from within the jewels themselves. She could feel it against her flesh like the touch of another living person. And they thrummed—a neverending low reverberation that traveled throughout her entire body. A strange magic she couldn’t even begin to understand had taken control of her. 

Frightened by her confusion, panicked by this shattering of her beliefs, her human instinct took over. She began to scream.

“Ben! Help me!  _ Please help me! _ ” 

“He won’t hear you,” Luke chastised her. “He isn’t coming to save you.”

But Rey felt differently. There was something there, between her and Ben. Some unspoken connection that they could neither define nor deny; it felt older than either of them and deeper than they could imagine. 

When she called him, she believed he could hear her.

And he did. Within minutes he was in the doorway to the ballroom, where he had paused to take in the scene before him.

“Uncle? Rey? What is going on?” 

Luke was surprised, but if his nephew’s appearance worried him greatly, he did not show it. 

“Ben! Please help; he’s tied me up! He says he’s going to use me as a vessel to bring Raewyn back!”

Shock, fear, and pain flashed across Ben’s handsome face all at once. He rushed to Rey’s side and began trying to untie the rope binding her right wrist when the necklace caught his attention and he froze. 

He recognized it.

Trembling slightly, he touched one of the rubies, but he pulled back almost instantly, as if it had burned him. 

“Where did you get this…?” he murmured. “What are you doing?” 

He glared sharply at Luke. His uncle only smiled.

“Ben! You can’t trust him! He lied to you, Ben. He’s  _ been _ lying to you, all this time—”

“I did not!” Suddenly, Luke had come alive again, and now he looked enraged. 

“He told you Raewyn killed herself, but she didn’t! He poisoned her and faked the letter!”

Ben’s face fell and his entire body seemed to sag forward a bit. He cast wide, disbelieving eyes on his uncle.

“Ben, I never. I wouldn’t lie to you—we’re family. This girl is just a  _ stranger _ ; an outsider! How could she know the truth?”

“He gave her poisoned wine that night and hid her real letter away in a locked trunk,” Rey pressed on. Now that she could tell him what she knew, the terrible story spilled from her mouth and there was no stopping it.

Ben looked at her. “ _ Real _ letter?” he asked.

Rey nodded, her expression turning tender. “Yes. Ben, she wanted to marry you. She accepted your offer. You were so close to having everything you wanted...but he took it away from you.”

She felt terrible as she said the words. Watching his world shatter made her feel sick. He looked broken, defeated, and then, viciously angry. 

He turned on his uncle like a provoked beast at the end of its rope; hackles raised, hands coiling into tight fists. 

“Is it true?” He demanded.

Luke was quiet for a moment, considering his response. 

“It’s because of  _ you _ that I’m stuck here, like  _ this _ ? All this time, you let me think it was my suicide that brought about this curse and it was  _ you! _ ”

Luke pierced his nephew with a calculating stare.

“Ben...remember, the plan! I’m bringing her back to you. That’s what this is all for! You agreed to use this woman to try and escape our prison, did you not?”

Rey’s heart sank. “What…?” She whispered.

“That was before I knew what you’d done,” Ben snarled. 

“Ben, you knew about this?” Rey asked quietly.

He turned to look at her with mild surprise on his face; he seemed to have forgotten she was there at all.

“Rey, I...I never agreed to treating you like this. I had my trepidation about the whole thing, but—”

“You knew what was at stake,” Luke interjected bitterly. “You knew what had to be done.”

Ben set his jaw. “No,” he said sternly. “I’ve changed my mind. This is over. I will not allow it to continue for another minute.”

He knelt down beside Rey and once more started to untie her bindings. 

“You’re too late now,” Luke said. “I’ve already called her. She’s coming to get what I denied her, and there’s no stopping it.

“Soon, we will be free.”

“Ben...please…” Rey whispered, her whole body trembling in fear. “I don’t want this…”

“I know, I know. I’m so sorry,” Ben replied hurriedly.

He finally untied Rey’s right wrist. Her hand throbbed dully as the blood began to recirculate through her fingers. 

“Whatever happens, Rey, I will not let you die,” he swore. 

“And what about you?” She asked, though her throat felt very tight.

He gave her a sad half-smile. 

“I’m already dead. Whatever happens now won’t change that fact.”

Perhaps this was of some comfort to him, but it only made Rey’s heart hurt more to think of it.

He was dead. This lovely, handsome man, with so much tenderness and love hidden behind his broken facade, was long dead. Had been, from the moment Rey laid eyes on him. And yet, her heart sang for him. It was all very odd, and made her feel strangely hollow. Unfulfilled, somehow.

Would things be any different if he were alive?

Luke’s announcement cut through the room like shards of ice, chilling the flesh of those who heard the two words, spoken so flatly, as if they carried little to no weight at all. In reality, they were the most frightening two words Rey felt she had ever heard in her life.

“She’s here.”

Ben froze. Rey’s eyes snapped back and forth, up and down, trying to see ‘her’ before it was too late. But there was no woman who appeared with a face eerily similar to Rey’s. That feminine voice which had led Rey on a wild hunt through the halls and grounds of the mansion did not speak up. 

Instead, there was only a light. It began as a soft blue orb off in the distance, flickering as if it had very little power left. But before Rey could either define it or see it clearly, it grew, tripling in size and brightness until the entire ballroom was filled with a brilliant white glow. 

Before Rey could fully comprehend what was happening, if that was even possible, the light overcame her. It became so bright and vivid that it blinded her. She couldn’t see Ben, or Luke, or anything other than the light itself. 

And then everything went cold, and dark. 

Rey had been tucked away, like an old memory, far in the recesses of her mind. Trapped, in her own head. 

Her body, however, was not so restrained. Her eyes snapped open to reveal no pupil or iris; there were only two white orbs that seemed to have their own bluish glow, like the light that came before. 

“No…” Ben whispered, faltering back, away from the thing he no longer recognized. 

He turned to his uncle, seething.

“What have you  _ done? _ ”

“Only what was necessary,” Luke replied calmly. “We are nearly done with this place, dear nephew. All you need to do is kiss her, and the curse will be broken.”

But as Ben looked at the woman who had formerly been Rey—because there was no denying she was no longer—the last thing he wanted to do was kiss such a stranger.  _ This isn’t right,  _ kept repeating in his head.  _ This isn’t right. _

And then, the thing spoke. Her voice was slightly higher-pitched than Rey’s, and she spoke with a much more formal air.

“Benjamin,” it said, “I’ve come home to you.”

It turned its milky eyes to him and smiled tenderly, its brows turning upward in the middle. 

“We can finally be together for eternity, like we had intended!”

There was a part of him, albeit faint, that felt a sudden desire to succumb to the promise of that which he had long dreamed of. But it was like an aged memory; its lines were less defined, its edges were curled and delicate. It was as if he had just been tapped on the shoulder by a ghost, so that when he tried to look right at it, it faded away completely.

This made him feel very odd indeed. For centuries now he had thought this was what he wanted—to be with Raewyn, his one true love long since lost to him—forever. But then he’d met Rey, and he realized things weren’t quite so clear cut.

Yes, she looked like Raewyn almost exactly. Even wrinkled her nose the same way when she smiled big or laughed. But she was an entirely different sort of person in mannerisms and demeanour. And she, like her doppelgänger before her, had captured his heart in a very short period of time.

It felt like fate; if ever a thing was to feel so important, this was it. It was as though, no matter the reincarnation, no matter the era, no matter the physical or otherworldly barriers, their souls were linked, undeniably and irrevocably. 

In every lifetime, they were destined to meet. To be thrust together, by no fault of their own. To fall deeply, deeply in love. 

Just as he felt that undefinable love and respect for his long-dead betrothed, he felt it for Rey, too, and it was because of this that he could not allow this plot to go on any longer, even at the risk of his own peace.

“No,” he said firmly, “we can’t. Not like this.”

Rey’s—Raewyn’s— _ their  _ face fell. Their lower lip quivered.

“But...why not?” 

“Because, my love. This isn’t right. This isn’t the way it should be. I know you know it, too.”

“Stop this!” Luke interjected angrily. “Just get this over with already! There’s too much at stake for such floundering!”

“This girl—Rey—whose body you inhabit, she deserves to live her life, just as you deserved to live yours. We cannot take from her what was taken by you so long ago.” Ben explained gingerly, ignoring his uncle’s protests.

“But the curse—”

“Is  _ ours _ to bear. Worry not, my uncle will pay dearly for what he’s done. But in the meantime, you must release her, Raewyn. Let go.”

Tears began to flow from those soft, hazel eyes. 

“I don’t think I can,” she sobbed, taking a firm hold of his hand with her free one. “I’m too afraid of what will happen.”

“It’s very frightening, not knowing an outcome,” Ben agreed. “But I can assure you, whatever lies beyond will be far less painful than this.”

“Are you a  _ fool? _ ” Luke shouted. “This is very likely our last chance to be freed!”

Ben rose, staring down his uncle coolly. 

“You want your freedom? You think you deserve anything but the very worst the afterlife has to offer? No. I believe punishment is given when it’s due. Wherever you go after this, I’m confident it will only be worse.”

“You always were such a pessimist, nephew.” 

Luke started to advance on Ben, but he didn’t get very far before that same blinding light filled the ballroom once again, stopping him in his tracks.

Both men turned and watched in stunned fascination as the light poured out of the girl on the couch in thick, swirling plumes, like smoke caught in the sunlight. It gathered strength until it became a great, vacillating orb in the air. It floated above Ben and Luke’s heads and traveled to the middle of the dancefloor. There it stopped, and a voice emanated from it.

“Ben, I’m ready...I’m ready to let go, if you will come with me…”

“What is this magic…?” Luke whispered to himself. 

Slowly, he walked closer to the great, glowing ball, and peered into it. Ben followed at a good distance, and watched his uncle’s face change. Luke’s eyes went wide and disbelieving. His jaw dropped open in shock.

“I can see them—my sister and Han,” he murmured, utterly mystified. “It’s a portal, to the other side! It must be! Oh, it worked after all!”

Ben did not share his uncle’s hopeful joy, however. Suspicion clouded his mind. It all seemed too simple. So, he waited, and did not take one step closer.

Luke, on the other hand, could not be dissuaded by his nephew’s lack of urgency. It mattered not to him if the boy chose to stay trapped in this purgatory until the end of time. Luke Skywalker had only ever thought of himself; why should he stop now?

He reached out towards the light, as though trying to step into it. As soon as he came into contact with it, however, there was a bright burst of vibrant energy that crackled through the air like lightning. Luke screamed in such a way that Ben had never heard before; it was animalistic, more like the yelp of an injured dog than the shout of a human being.

Ben watched in muted horror as his uncle faltered back, clutching his hand to his chest, his face screwed up in pain. 

And then everything happened very quickly.

Luke began to scream and cry, as fragments of him began to break away and disintegrate into thin air, beginning where the light had touched him. 

“What is happening?! No!  _ NO! _ ” 

There was nothing Ben could do. He didn’t want to approach and end up the same way. To be fair, after everything he had learned that night, he didn’t feel much of an urge to rescue his uncle anyway. And so he watched, as Luke fell to his knees, crumbling into nonexistence before Ben’s very eyes.

With one final, echoing scream, Luke was gone. All that remained were Ben, Rey, and the pulsating light in the middle of the room.

Suddenly, a voice from behind him snapped him out of his shock.

“Ben…?”

He turned and rushed to Rey’s side. Her eyes, back to normal, were slowly beginning to open; those long, dark lashes fluttering against the scorching brightness of the strange orb.

“Rey, is that you?” he asked quietly.

Her eyebrows creased. She groaned in discomfort.

“Yes...what’s happening?”

He smiled, softly, beautifully, down at her. 

“It’s over. You’re safe. But, I think it’s time for me to go now.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned.

“I can finally be free. I have to let go.”

“But—” She brushed her fingertips across the top of his hand, and he grasped her fingers in his. “How?”

Ben shrugged, still smiling. “True love, I suppose. It found a way to work its magic after all, just not in the way my uncle had hoped.”

“Oh,” she nodded sleepily. “So this means I’ll never see you again, doesn’t it?”

Knowing all he knew now, Ben felt no shame in answering her. 

“Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, that’s what it means. But I don’t think that we will  _ never _ see each other again, in some way or another.” 

She looked confused, and incredibly tired as she asked, “How do you mean?”

He chuckled warmly. “I only mean that the universe has a funny way of repeating itself, and the next time we meet, things may be a little different, but a lot of things will remain very much the same.” 

He bowed his head then and kissed her just below her hairline. She was so warm, and now that he could leave, he found that the longer he stayed in this realm, the colder he felt. 

It was time to go.

“Goodbye, Rey. And thank you.”

He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not, for she had already succumbed to that heavy desire to sleep. 

And so he turned away, and walked towards the light. As he got close, he saw his parents, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his bride. The light welcomed him with a pleasant warmth, and the promise of peaceful rest at long last.

***

_ Four months later _

Rey rubbed her temples at her desk and rolled her right wrist in circles. She’d been filling out paperwork all morning and for most of the afternoon, and it was beginning to hurt. She’d woken up late for work that morning, her coffee had had grounds in it, and she’d torn a hole in her favourite pair of tights. 

It was not shaping up to be a good day.

So maybe it was fate intervening when her co-worker, Julie, tapped on her desk with one long, acrylic nail and announced that she was going out for lunch, which would leave Rey solely in charge of any customer that came in or called. At the time, Rey didn’t think of it as fate. Rey thought of it as yet another reason why Julie was a lousy co-worker, especially on days when it was only her and Rey in the office. 

The bells chimed as Julie exited the office, and Rey heaved a deep sigh. At the very least, she was alone, for a little while. 

She pulled her hair out of the bun she’d fastened it in, in the hopes that it might alleviate some of the tension which had developed in her temples. She stretched out her fingers and her toes, and even got out of her chair and walked around the office for a minute. When she sat back down at her desk, she found she still did not want to finish filling out paperwork.

_ Only for a minute,  _ she told herself as she rested her head atop her folded arms on her desk. She shut her eyes, inhaling the faint smell of her laundry detergent and the odor from the sanitizing cleaner the night janitor used on the desks. 

She may have been just on the cusp of sleep when the doorbells chimed again, she wasn’t sure. Her mind had entered that fuzzy place just before sleep, where dreams may or may not have occurred—one could never quite know.

Her vision was blurry at first as her eyes adjusted to the light once more. All she could see initially was the bright whiteness of the front door, mostly obscured by a tall, dark shadow that slowly began to take shape as a person.

“Sorry to disturb you,” the shadow said, “the sign said you were open.”

It was a deep, male voice, warm and oddly familiar. Although minor, there was something unmistakably foreign about it—something as simple as an accent, or as trivial as a stutter.

“Oh! Yes, we are! I’m so sorry, I was just—”

Rey’s words caught in her throat as her vision focused. It should be impossible, she thought, for him to be standing before her like that. He looked just the same and yet, completely different. Dressed in a modern grey t-shirt, dark jeans, and sneakers, with perhaps a little more muscle tone than she remembered. His hair seemed to be slightly longer, too, and messier. But his face, with its telltale freckles, long, straight nose, and full lips remained the same.

“Ben.” She couldn’t stop the name from slipping through her lips in a disbelieving whisper.

“Sorry?” the man asked, raising a perplexed eyebrow.

Rey blinked, coming back into herself at once. Even though nothing about this made sense to her, even though her mind was reeling at double-speed, she knew enough to understand that this was not Ben Solo.

Not as she had known him, anyway.

Familiar words floated through her mind:  _ The universe has a funny way of repeating itself. _

“Um, that is to say...well, ugh.” She shook her head, willing away her own confusion, and gave him her best realtor smile. “Hello! What can I do for you?”

The stranger who both was and wasn’t a stranger smiled crookedly and stepped closer to Rey’s desk.

“Well, I’m moving to town for work in a month and I figured I should probably find a place to rent or something, so...do you have anything to recommend?” 

Rey chuckled kindly. “You’ve come to the right place. Please, take a seat, and I’ll pull a few rentals for you to look at. My name’s Rey Johnston, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Rey,” the man said, smiling at her. His eyes, the colour of dark, amber honey, seemed to take every inch of her in with relish. He didn’t take his eyes off of her, nor could he seem to wipe that smile from his handsome face.

“I’m Kylo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! Sorry it's late, but at this point you really shouldn't have expected anything different.
> 
> Thanks for reading this story, everyone! I appreciate your kudos and comments. I hope you enjoyed the ending. I wanted to make it especially sweet after making you wait so long for the finale. 
> 
> Follow me for more shenanigans!  
[Tumblr.](www.twitter.com/reyloghosts>Twitter</a>%0A<a%20href=)  
[Twitter.](http://www.twitter.com/reyloghosts)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to share this with you all! I probably could have started uploading these a little sooner, but you know, life and stuff. Then the TROS trailer came out and I went, oh shit. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you liked it! Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments! Two things to note: yes this story will follow the storyline of The Haunted Mansion film, but slightly altered to accommodate the fact that Rey is not married, nor does she have children in this story; I haven't completed it all yet but it's looking like there will be four or five parts to this story! I'll try and upload as regularly as possible. Thank you for reading!!
> 
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[Twitter.](https://twitter.com/reyloghosts)


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